Some members of the Cyber threats- resilience team
As the cybersecurity landscape evolves, attackers become more sophisticated and users of cyber-related services always stand the risk of cyber threat exposures, firms struggle to keep up with the level of attacks and in many cases they may not even know about these attacks, gap assessment in people, processes and technology, training staff and finding the right solution are just a few of the many information security compliance issues flooding the managers of these cyber infrastructure.
On Friday 13th July, Spearhead Networks an ICT Security Consulting firm and winner of the Ghana Information Technology and Telecom (GITTA) awards (IT Security Provider Of The Year 2016 & Cybersecurity Company Of The Year 2017) partnered with two other young cybersecurity consulting firms under a business synergy programme; the firms which include Information Security Architects and Netwatch Technologies, have been known in the offensive security industry to be very good at what they do as security researchers and cyber risk solution providers.
Speaking to the press from La Palm Royal Beach where this event took place, the Chief Executive Officer of Spearhead Networks Mr. Ernest Offei Darko Mensah revealed that one of the biggest challenges facing the industry is capacity building which do not only include mere awareness training for staff but goes deeper into assisting the governance of corporate and public institutions of their cyber risk exposure and ultimately building a resilience plan to assist corporates manage their cyber infrastructure. He further noted also in an opening presentation that business synergy is purposely to harness the strengths of the 3 companies involved to assist enhancing the delivery of singular and disjointed products into a seamless cyber resilience service package ensuring clients do not only buy products but get the benefit of partnering a cyber knowledge bank to augment their cyber security effort.
On his part the Lead Consultant speaking on behalf of Information Security Architects Ltd (ISA), Mr. Desmond Israel made a point that the recent ITU Global Cybersecurity Index placed Ghana very high among its African peers for her effort in instituting the needed legal, regulatory & policy framework but not so much a pride in capacity building and technical measures, he said further that Information security service providers cannot claim to offer a solution when they themselves do not perhaps follow and research into the trends of the cyber landscapes, ISA is proud to be part of this bigger dream and is ready under its responsible disclosure programme to help more firms understand their cyber risk exposures and also provide the needed technology solutions and training, “we can defend our cyberspace if we have insight and that is the bedrock of cybersecurity resilience” - he said.
Delivering through a presentation on the Cybersecurity Landscape Adam Nurudini a cybersecurity researcher from Netwatch Technologies and recent Blackhat Conference attendee said attacks will get worse and predicted that by 2021 security breaches will increase making a point through his demonstrations using hacking tools that more users will fall for attacks and more government portals will be attacked, he called for the right engagement with stakeholders and proposed a roundtable discussion with relevant heads to enlighten them about some of these real-time exposure.
The business synergy programme under which the Cybersecurity Resilience Service Team –CRST was conceived brought together 27 participants from all three companies and was taken through cybersecurity business development training which included presentation skills and branding for cybersecurity security service by Mr. Clement Danternii a business development practitioner. Participants expressed their excitement about the initiative and hope for the next implementation phase which is engagement and delivery.
